


wedding nights

by efthemia



Category: CLAMP - Works, xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen, M/M, its actually douwata dw, the doumeki+kohane is Technically there but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 16:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11948229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/efthemia/pseuds/efthemia
Summary: “Shizuka,” she says quietly, “Don’t think of me.”





	wedding nights

“Congratulations!” 

“Congratulations, Doumeki-kun! Your wife is very—“ 

“—Very beautiful—“ 

“—I'm sure you'll be very happy—“ 

“Shizuka, come say hello to your grandmother, she—“ 

“—you and Kohane-san will be very—“ 

“—your friend? The one with the glasses? Couldn’t he come?” 

It’s a blur of the familiar surroundings of the temple, the less-familiar faces of many of his guests, Kohane’s gentle smile as she accepts everyone’s congratulations. He’s been letting her answer for him for most of them. 

“He’s—“ Kohane pauses, looks towards him. 

“He’s out of town,” Doumeki states calmly, arm around his—wife’s—shoulders. “There was an emergency. Unfortunately, he promised to be somewhere.” 

“That’s a shame. He’s not around much anymore, is he? That, what was his name again—“ 

Doumeki swallows and lets Kohane answer again. 

“Yes,” she says, “A shame.” 

\--- 

Nighttime. It’s the same room that he grew up in. It’s the same room that Haruka-san grew up in. It’s a bit strange, he thinks, to spend his wedding night in this room, surrounded by the few things he’s hoarded over the years. This room hasn’t changed since high school, except for the addition of books and papers from the university piled on his desk. 

They sit on his bed. 

The bed is new. He had a futon before. The sheets are freshly washed and smell slightly like lemon, and he wonders briefly who washed them. The smell is unfamiliar. 

Kohane’s hand is on his shoulder. 

He swallows, and swallows again. His throat feels like it does before he gets a cold, scratchy and dry and a little painful. He briefly thinks that honey tea would be nice, but it’s probably not the time to ask. 

He moves his hand mechanically to cup Kohane’s cheek, and she moves her hand across his chest and begins to unbutton his shirt. Doumeki had read magazines about this kind of thing in high school once or twice. He knows what he’s supposed to do, sort of. But he doesn’t— 

He helps her out of her shirt as she lifts her arms obligingly. He’s confronted with her bra and, after a second of him staring at it blankly, she removes it herself. 

Her hands move to his belt buckle and, although he knew that would logically be next, he won’t. He can’t. Doumeki flinches back before he can help himself. 

She draws back just as rapidly, and there’s a moment of silence. He can feel the heat of her body next to his, but he can’t look at her like this. 

Kohane puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s gentle. When he looks up, her eyes are gentle. And when she speaks, that’s gentle too. 

“Shizuka,” she says quietly, “Don’t think of me.” 

\--- 

He’s lying on his back with his eyes screwed shut, and he feels a weight settle on top of him. A brush of long hair falling against his face. A hand— 

Doumeki hurriedly fishes for something else, and stares blankly past the curtain of Kohane’s hair towards his desk in the corner of his room. 

His desk? It’s safe enough. It’s just his desk. His folklore books are piled up on top of it. He tries to remember what he lectured about in class last week. 

Kohane moves against him and makes a soft, uncomfortable-sounding noise. 

He thinks about the shop, instead. 

The faint aroma of whatever’s in that pipe is perpetually there; that much hasn’t changed since the ownership changed hands. He remembers a certain afternoon last summer. It was monsoon season, and the sticky, unforgiving heat of the day eventually gave way to a torrent of rain that hissed down around the shop and would’ve crushed the plants growing in the vegetable garden if they hadn’t been protected by some sort of magic he didn’t know the details of. 

Kohane’s hands and her long legs are pale and slender and if he doesn’t look too closely, it’s easy after that. 

To be honest, that particular summer day probably came to mind because he’d thought of it on that day too. As he sat on the porch, a glass of beer in his hand, as he heard a familiar voice scolding him for eating all the broiled burdock root with soy sauce on his own. He’d turned, and the shopkeeper was there, hands on his hips, face screwed up in annoyance, kimono falling open to reveal the pale skin of his neck, and Doumeki felt that familiar, all-consuming _need—_

Beer. Burdock root. The sound of rain. The heat of summer. Watanuki, Watanuki, _Watanuki_ — 

\--- 

When it's over, Doumeki lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, Kohane next to him curled up in a small ball with her long hair fanned across the pillow as she snores quietly, he wonders what to do now. Not just tonight, although he doesn't know if he can sleep, but the next day, and the next. He knows the general outline of the path his life is supposed to take after this, _why_ he got married. 

He feels absurdly young, all of a sudden. He's nearly thirty, but he doesn't feel it. And even more than that, he feels out of place. The temple has always been home, a place specifically _for_ him. But for the first time in his life, he feels, suddenly, that he has to be somewhere, anywhere else. 

But of course, that's a lie, he admits to himself as he hastily slips on underwear and a yukata, gently shaking his sleeping wife awake to tell her he's going out and will be back soon, as she mumbles sleepily in assent. As he slips on his sandals and locks the door behind him. As he sets off down the street at an uncomfortably fast pace. There is, in the end, only one place he can go. 

\--- 

Luckily for him, Maru, Moro, and Mokona all seem to be asleep (the latter from drinking too much liquor, probably). Or perhaps they know why he's here and have the good sense not to bother him. In any case, Doumeki slips through the gate, through the door of the shop, down the hall smelling faintly of pipe smoke, and right into Watanuki's bedroom without making a sound. Until he shakes Watanuki rudely awake with a loud "Oi", that is. When he finally wakes up, Watanuki does look very annoyed, but—somehow—not surprised. 

"I was dreaming about your grandfather," Watanuki mumbles, and, putting his glasses on, fixes Doumeki with a hard, skeptical stare. "He said you were up to no good. Are you?" 

Doumeki takes the glasses right back off, in answer, and kisses Watanuki immediately, hurriedly, before he has the chance to fully wake up or to figure it out or to tell him to go away or to—well, to do anything more sensible than this, really. Before he can think better of it. Before he can remember that he supposedly still hates Doumeki and Doumeki's guts. As if Doumeki didn't know better. 

But, somehow, it seems to work. At least, as well as could be expected. Watanuki doesn't exactly kiss back immediately, but he doesn't draw away either, or punch Doumeki, or cast a spell on him. He just sort of—waits. Like he saw this coming too, and is just watching it happen right in front of him. Or maybe he's just making sure Doumeki wants to go through with it. He wasn't there earlier in the day, of course, but he probably saw it all, and in any case he certainly _knows_. Maybe he doesn't want the responsibility. Maybe he'll punch him in a second after all. Doumeki doesn't fucking know. When he pulls back to catch his breath for a moment, his hands gripping Watanuki's slender shoulders, Watanuki's eyes look far-away, absent. He's seen that look before, when a customer comes in, when Watanuki is calculating a price—possibilities, maybes, new futures. _Hitsuzen._

When Watanuki seems to finally come back to himself, finally in the present, Doumeki doesn't know what he found the price to be. He's not sure if he cares. Watanuki just looks at him, over his face, his eyes. He can see double, through their shared eye; Watanuki before him, exactly the same as he's always been, the same as he was ten years ago. And Doumeki before him, decidedly not; he sees Watanuki look at his face, at the faint lines starting to come in under his eyes, at the hollow of his throat, at the dark fabric of his yukata against the shape of his collarbones. 

Watanuki scowls, blinks, and the visions go away. He's gotten better control over it now. Doumeki hadn't managed to see what expression his own face was making, but from the look on Watanuki's face, it must have been something entirely unprecedented. 

"Well," Watanuki says, hoarsely, "I guess there's nothing for it," and leans back in to kiss him properly, hard and quick and a little desperate. 

It's a relief in more ways than one, to see him like this, to know he's still himself. That he's not entirely the old and distant being he already sometimes seems to be, with the heaviness in his eyes that's been there ever since Doumeki found him in the storeroom, holding a trailing kimono and a pair of glasses. 

And then he's leaning Watanuki back down onto the bed, his heart thumping painfully loud; he's shrugging his arms and shoulders free of the yukata, and Watanuki's untying the obi, all backward and wrong and too fast, and he can see through Watanuki's eye again, can see himself looking determined as ever as he helps Watanuki shed his clothes, single-minded in the same way as he is when holding his bow and arrow. And then their clothes are all off and Watanuki's hands are all over him and all he can think is—finally, _finally_ —and Watanuki's back arches against the bed and his hands grip the sheets and soon enough, Doumeki can think of nothing at all. 

\--- 

"Will we do it again?" Watanuki asks, in a nonchalant way that sounds entirely forced. He is leaning back against the pillows, fiddling absentmindedly with a string that's come loose from the sheets. "I mean, you know. This." 

Doumeki's stomach grumbles in answer, and Watanuki _tsks_ , with the very clear meaning of _I am_ not _making you food right now_. He sits up and pulls his yukata back on, tying it loosely at the waist. Watanuki's eyes follow him, catlike, as he taps tobacco into his pipe and lights it, taking a long drag. 

Doumeki's always hated that pipe ever since Watanuki started using it. Watanuki puffs out a long breath of smoke, and it all feels horribly, laughably wrong. Like a chasm has opened beneath his feet. How do you tell if you've done the right thing or not, when the right thing is what you've always wanted to do? It's hard to have much objectivity about it. Watanuki probably knows, but he's sure as hell not telling. 

"Make mapo tofu," he says finally. "And shaved ice after. It's hot." 

Watanuki hits him with a pillow and goes on a brief rant about ungrateful gluttons, but eventually slips his clothes back on and pads barefoot into the kitchen anyway. Doumeki stares down at his hand: peach wood next to glinting gold. He wonders how long it could go on like this. 

Watanuki does make mapo tofu, and gives him leftovers to take home to Kohane in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: Hot Twunk Goes At It Two Times In One Night!!
> 
> do u ever procrastinate on a fic so you write another fic and you procrastinate on that so u write another fic and
> 
> TECHNICALLY this is like.... two goddamn years old... at least the first half is... i wonder if the difference in writing styles is as evident as it is to me.. anyway i wrote the second half in like an hour and here it is
> 
> thanks 2 my friend yoomster for this fic idea!! this was originally gonna be a collab so thank u for letting me steal this idea and run with it. but also fuck u @ them for getting me into CLAMP hell in the first place
> 
> (i'll update ghostfic soon but enjoy this for now)


End file.
